Paris Embraces ‘Einstein’ Again

PARIS — “Einstein on the Beach,” the avant-garde opera composed by Philip Glass and directed by Robert Wilson, is nearing the end of a two-year revival tour with its arrival here. And the city has rolled out the red carpet for Mr. Wilson.

Opening on Tuesday at the Théâtre du Châtelet, “Einstein” is the capstone to a Wilsonian celebration that has included sold-out performances of his work “The Old Woman,” a genre-bending, Beckett-inspired tragicomic slapstick, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe, and his dark take on “Peter Pan,” with music by the duo CocoRosie. Starting in February, the Paris Opera will stage his production of “Madama Butterfly.”

Mr. Wilson has also been given a residency at the heart of the Louvre, a rare honor for a living artist. Called “Living Rooms,” it is on view until next month. In addition to public lectures and screenings of his films, it includes two video works: one inspired by David’s “The Death of Marat,” hung in the painting galleries, and another in which Lady Gaga brings to life a painting by Ingres.

The centerpiece of the residency is a room filled with objects from Mr. Wilson’s personal collection in New York, including African masks, a Shaker chair, ancient Chinese ceramics, shoes worn by Marlene Dietrich and a photo of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Glass taken in the early 1980s by Robert Mapplethorpe: all sources of inspiration.

It’s not hard to imagine Paris celebrating Mr. Wilson, the experimental American director, artist and all-around avant-garde Renaissance man, given his long history with France. “Einstein on the Beach” first appeared at the Avignon Festival in 1976. Since then, most of Mr. Wilson’s major works have appeared in Paris.

In a recent public conversation at the Arts Arena, a cultural association in Paris, Mr. Wilson recalled how easy it was to persuade the French Culture Ministry to finance “Einstein on the Beach.” He said he simply went to the culture minister at the time, Michel Guy, and asked for support. A few minutes later, it was a done deal.

“I think Bob Wilson might not have ever emerged from the New York downtown avant-garde scene of the ’70s, had it not been for French audience support and government support,” said Margery Arent Safir, the general editor of “Robert Wilson From Within,” a collection of essays on the artist, and the director of the Arts Arena.

In 1972, Mr. Wilson’s “Deafman Glance,” a long, silent play, appeared at the Nancy Festival, and later opened in Paris, championed by the designer Pierre Cardin. The Surrealist poet Louis Aragon loved it and published a letter to the Surrealist poet André Breton (who had died in 1966), saying that Mr. Wilson was the true heir to the Surrealists. “This totally set Bob up,” Ms. Safir said.

It took the American cultural establishment longer to warm to Mr. Wilson. For the New York debut of “Einstein,” the Metropolitan Opera allowed Mr. Wilson to rent the house on a Sunday, but would not produce the work. The house sold out in two days. (The opera was reviewed in The New York Times by Clive Barnes under the headline “ ‘Einstein on the Beach’ Transforms Boredom Into Memorable Theater.”)

The latest revival tour, which has crossed three continents, began in January 2012 and included a stop at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It ends in Berlin in March. “Einstein on the Beach” loosely explores the idea that Einstein, a pacifist, was responsible for helping to create the atomic bomb. But the work sought to eliminate conventional narrative. The music will be performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble and the dance by the Lucinda Childs Dance Company. Mr. Wilson has also digitally remastered the lighting, always a fundamental element in his work. Ms. Childs performed in the original production and has done the choreography for the revival.

In one moment emblematic of the new production, Ms. Childs has a dancer walk back and forth along a diagonal path across the full space of the stage with ever-growing intensity, evoking the arrival of an oncoming train.

In a recent telephone interview, Ms. Childs recalled Mr. Wilson’s original direction: “His instructions were very free. He said, ‘Can you just use those three diagonals?’ ”

In the opera, all the characters play Einstein. “I was holding a pipe in my left arm,” Ms. Childs said. “I held it out for the entire dance, which was a little bit of a stress. Then there were movements I built into it, which my dancer now does, progressively, so it gets crazier and crazier.”

Asked how a viewer might approach “Einstein on the Beach,” she said: “Just be open. I think that’s what Wilson suggests or encourages. Relax.” She said she was sometimes reluctant going to the theater for each performance, but was always pleasantly surprised.

“I’ve seen it night after night,” Ms. Childs said. “I go in and I think, ‘Oh my God,’ but it goes by. I find that a lot with Bob’s work. Once you get into it, it takes you with it.”